AOTU Shijie

AOTU Shjie is a series about the AOTU tournament, a popular life or death game where thousands of contestants compete in order to be the winner and have any wish granted. In the preliminary phase, contestants need to earn enough points to remain in the top 100 places; points are a currency in the game where contestants collect from killing monsters or players - they can also be used to purchase items from the AOTU store.

The story follows King, an optimistic generic shounen type main character and his friends Grey, Shidou and Kalie as they battle it out in the preliminary phase of AOTU ... tournament.

Story: 7/10
The story is surprisingly well grounded and logical. By sticking within this game world, the story is limited in development and doesn't need to add unnecessary details to make it flashy. The basic grasp of AOTU World can be interpreted early on in the series which allows a natural flow of character establishment and development. Since AOTU World is about a life or death game, there is naturally a lot of surface tension that is reflected in which characters we choose to trust. There seems to be constant foreshadowing of King and Shidou's decision to join the Ghost Haven / Spectre Union (AOTU's largest contestant party ruled by Fox.G) Initially, I found it bland and almost dropped it from the beginning but nearing the end of the first season I realized this series has a bit of potential based on the story.

Art & Sound: 6/10
The art is hard to follow sometimes but it is much higher quality and bearable compared to the recycled and poorly rigged characters of some smaller budget donghuas. The animation is pretty smooth in fight scenes.

I didn't notice much about VAs or background music, everything was typical.

Character: 5/10
King is a naïve, easily manipulated generic shounen main character who is tricked several times in the series because of his overoptimistic outlook in the AOTU tournament. His choices tick me off a lot in the series but all is well since he has plot armor that negates his bad choices. Aside from that, the characters in this series actually have varying personality traits and abilities like Shidou's monster taming, Kalie's overpowered Old Bones companion, and Grey's overwhelming strength. This is probably the way I'd imagine the power of friendship to be used especially in a game where everyone is fighting for themselves these characters who fight for themselves are compassionate to fight together because of our naïve main character King. Apart from that, the enemy characters (Ray's pirate crew, Ghost Haven, Godrose) are pretty decently developed and are cunning enough to be season 1's main antagonist force.

Enjoyment / Overall: 6/10
This series was enjoyable most of the time, I am always dumbfounded when King's bad decisions always lead to him being saved in the long run. Like his decision to sit on the fence with Ghost Haven's operations until the end where he decides to stop them from attacking Grey and getting saved by Kalie. Overall, pretty average.